Details of Witherspoon's suspension emerge

Posted on: January 14, 2011 8:25 pm

Edited on: January 14, 2011 8:40 pm

There's been some confusion about what exactly triggered Wesley Witherspoon's suspension from Memphis.

Here's the deal (according to a source): The Tigers lost 64-58 at SMU on Wednesday, showered, dressed and filed into a bus that took them to the airport in Dallas. Nobody said a word. They then got on their chartered plane, flew home and landed in Memphis without incident, at which point the coaches got into their personal vehicles and drove home while the players got on a bus there to transport them to campus. And it was at some point during that drive -- the drive from the airport in Memphis to the Memphis campus -- when Witherspoon used the bus' loud speaker to do an impersonation of one of Josh Pastner's assistants.

"It happened, but it didn't happen in front of the coaches," a source said. "The coaches weren't on that bus. Wesley would've never done that in front of the coaches."

Pastner was informed of Witherspoon's antics after the fact because somebody on the bus told somebody close to Pastner. Upon hearing what Witherspoon did, Pastner immediately suspended the 6-foot-9 forward because, a source said, the second-year coach thought mocking an assistant after a disappointing loss was simply "unacceptable," particularly for a supposed leader on a roster comprised mostly of first-year players. It's the latest move Pastner has made to try to change Witherspoon's attitude. Whether it'll work remains unclear.

There is no timetable for a possible Witherspoon return.

He will not be in uniform Saturday when the Tigers host Marshall at FedExForum.

Details of Witherspoon's suspension emerge

Details of Witherspoon's suspension emerge

Could have been the bus driver, a manager.

Since: Apr 20, 2009

Posted on: January 15, 2011 10:43 am

Details of Witherspoon's suspension emerge

When you're winning, the laughing and joking is all a sign of a team that's hitting on all cylinders. When you're losing, it's a sign that the team (or teammate) just doesn't get it, doesn't care, and would rather make fun of those that are trying to help, instead of taking responsibility for what's going wrong.

Pastner did the right thing....what will be interesting is to see if Witherspoon is tough enough to do something about it, and I mean on the court, not on twitter!

Jamammy3000
Since: May 11, 2009

Posted on: January 15, 2011 1:35 am

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Since: Jan 14, 2009

Posted on: January 14, 2011 11:43 pm

Details of Witherspoon's suspension emerge

What could be even more telling is who was the snitch? This is a disfunctional team everyone out for themselves. If this was truly a team then someone would have taken him aside and talked to hm. A close teammate would not have ran to the coaches to tattle. You do not do that to a teammate. Yes he did wrong andf someone should have talked to him about it, but it can easily be said that having an atmospher where there is a snitch on teh team does not foster good team chemistry.

Since: Jan 15, 2007

Posted on: January 14, 2011 10:23 pm

Details of Witherspoon's suspension emerge

Everybody likes a joke, now and then, but the timing of that one couldn't have been worse. Doing that stuff with the team in the Bahamas is one thing, but a lot of people don't think it's all that funny losing to the worst team in C-USA.

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